Slaughter at McDonald’s changed how police operate
When James Huberty walked into a McDonald’s restaurant 25 years ago this month, he knew he was going to kill somebody. He probably didn’t know his murderous rampage would change how police departments work.
Police help a wounded customer out of a California McDonald’s where a man killed 21 people in 1984.
At 3:40 p.m. on July 18, 1984, Huberty carried a long-barreled Uzi semiautomatic rifle, a pump-action shotgun and a handgun into a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, an enclave of San Diego, California.
Witnesses said the unemployed welder and security guard started shooting immediately, and kept on shooting for 77 minutes until a police sniper on a nearby rooftop ended the siege with a bullet through Huberty’s heart.
When the carnage ended, Huberty and 21 victims — including grandmothers, an infant, children on bicycles and teenage McDonald’s employees — lay dead inside and outside the restaurant. Nineteen others were wounded.
San Diego police Capt. Miguel Rosario, a patrol officer back then, was the first cop on the scene, believing he was responding to a single
